I spoke to Josh Green for his Bloomberg piece on the anticlimactic finish to the debt limit saga.

Assuming McCarthy can whip a majority of his members to support the bill and Democrats supply the remaining votes, we won’t have to think about the 80th debt-ceiling fight until after the next presidential election. By then, passions may have cooled. Reason might prevail. Members of Congress might finally see the debt ceiling as the fool’s gold that it always is.

“When Dems were freaking out because Biden was caving, that felt really good for Republicans,” says Liam Donovan, a Republican strategist and debt-ceiling expert. “Now that they’re looking at the deal, it’s turning into a bitter pill. I hope it makes them think this isn’t worth doing again.”

As we all know, it probably won’t.

Read the full piece here.

I spoke to Aaron Blake for his Washington Post piece on the GOP reaction to the debt limit deal, and Speaker McCarthy’s standing within the conference.

And then there’s the question of what the Freedom Caucus would even get out of it. Their protestations notwithstanding, GOP strategist Liam Donovan suggests that it’s not much.

“The question for these guys is how and why a future speaker would be any better for them when the one who was exceedingly accommodating got no quarter,” Donovan said. He added that the Freedom Caucus needs to decide whether “their disappointment is worth blowing up what has been a pretty effective arrangement for them to date.”

Thus far, despite the Freedom Caucus’s demonstrated affinity for blowing things up to make a point, the answer appears to be no.

Read the full piece here.

In a Wall Street Journal story on the glitchy rollout of the DeSantis presidential campaign, Alex Leary linked and excerpted a post of mine.

“The technical follies involved in the announcement will be lost on most and soon forgotten by all but the biggest keyboard cowboys, but the idea itself seemed half baked and spur of the moment,” GOP strategist Liam Donovan wrote Thursday. “Interesting, and not without potential, but not indicative of the fine-tuned electoral machine we were promised in the wake of the red wave that crested across the sunshine state eight months ago.”

Read the full piece here, and see my post in its entirety on my Substack.

I spoke to Jeff Stein for his Washington Post piece about how the White House strategy of using outside business groups and economic think tanks to pressure Republicans on the debt ceiling boomeranged on the President.

“The White House made an understandable but ultimately ill-advised bet that House Republicans could not get their act together, with the assumption the GOP would then fold under pressure from the business community,” said Liam Donovan, a Republican political strategist. “But with the passage of a GOP debt limit proposal, any industry group or think tank that is more interested in keeping the economy on the rails understands that the path of least resistance is for Biden to sit down with McCarthy and come to a deal that allows everyone to save face.”

Read the full piece here.

I spoke to POLITICO‘s Josh Seigel about Joe Manchin’s ongoing battle with the Biden Administration over implementation of the landmark clean energy package he staked his legacy on.

Some Democrats fear that Manchin’s criticisms will do real damage by confusing the public about one of the law’s most debated-provisions: its $7,500 tax credits for electric vehicles. He has accused the Treasury Department of violating the law by flouting strict provisions he wrote designed to force electric vehicles to be made in the U.S. with American-made parts.

“When you’re Joe Manchin it never hurts to be seen butting heads with the administration, but I think this is genuine umbrage over the fact Congressional intent seems pretty clear, even if the statutory construction left room for Treasury to maneuver,” said Liam Donovan, a lobbyist with the firm Bracewell who previously worked for the National Republican Senatorial Committee. “And given that he would not have been on board for the bill at all had this been the understanding, it reads as a personal betrayal.”

Read the full piece here.